40 Under 40
For the past five years, the Marijuana Venture staff has compiled an annual list of some of the brightest young leaders and influencers in the cannabis industry. As in past years, we have narrowed the list from hundreds of worthy candidates to present 40 individuals from the vast and ever-changing business in the United States and Canada.
It is our honor to share their stories.
Danny Khuu
Age: 39
Company: The Evergreen Market
Title: Director of Product Strategy
Danny Khuu remembers the exact strain that made him a believer. It was Strawberry Cough, and he discovered it after researching cultivars to help his girlfriend — now fiancée — overcome her anxiety.
After studying cultivation books, Khuu began growing it himself. That led to turning it into hash oil and making edibles for the state’s medical market under the names THC Treats and Indicola. He originally got a producer/processor license for the legal market, but first his investor backed out and then his facility was burglarized.
“I really was rethinking what I wanted to do,” he says. “It was a great blessing in disguise.”
Around that time, Khuu connected with the owners of Evergreen Market, a newly licensed retail store in a Seattle suburb that was looking for knowledgeable staff members to help in its “knowledge bar” concept. Khuu was hired and has been there ever since, first as a budtender, then a manager and finally as the five-store chain’s buyer and director of product strategy.
“It’s my dream job, and I never knew this job would even exist,” he says. “It’s what I’m meant to do.”
He says he loves the people that he works with and for and loves being part of the pioneers of cannabis industry. He also looks forward to the future, when he will have a chance to look back on these days he calls “beyond the opportunity of a lifetime.”
“In the future when people look back on the industry, this is the era they’ll talk about,” he says, adding that all the major advances in the industry have come from inside the community. “We keep grinding, but we’ll look back like, ‘Man, we had a room full of legends and trailblazers and we didn’t realize it because it was us.’”